No, it is related to wysiwyg editor. All modern forums have it, except for phpbb. It is much easer to use for non-nerd users, which is like 90+% of forum users. Bbcode and html have simple logical structure that is easy to use with wysiwyg. MD does't. MD and wysiwyg are pretty much mutually exclusive.

But really, who uses their mobile devices for that much anyways? Does anyone expect to write well formatted documents on their phone? No, they don't--people use their phones for quick tasks and leave in depth work to devices with more usable input.

It would be far worse on a mobile device for the 95% of users who haven't memorized all of the formatting rules for whatever flavor of markdown is used on the site. Whenever I have to try and format something in markdown I always need a separate dedicated window open with the specific rules for the site I'm trying to use--try that on a phone.

brunoais wrote:Is it hard or unpleasant to press the buttons to generate the BBCode tags' text?

Yes, definitively!
With German keyboard layout (and I suspect the same is true for many other non-US layouts as well), it is even difficult with a regular, full PC hardware keyboard, as explained in my earlier post.

I think that Brunoais was talking about the BBCode insert buttons (above the posting input window -- B, I and u, for example), not the keyboard "buttons" (AKA "keys").

I was going to ask that question myself. Why can't you press those buttons to insert the BBCode for you instead of typing it?

EXreaction wrote:But really, who uses their mobile devices for that much anyways? Does anyone expect to write well formatted documents on their phone? No, they don't--people use their phones for quick tasks and leave in depth work to devices with more usable input.

It would be far worse on a mobile device for the 95% of users who haven't memorized all of the formatting rules for whatever flavor of markdown is used on the site. Whenever I have to try and format something in markdown I always need a separate dedicated window open with the specific rules for the site I'm trying to use--try that on a phone.

brunoais wrote:Is it hard or unpleasant to press the buttons to generate the BBCode tags' text?

Yes, definitively!
With German keyboard layout (and I suspect the same is true for many other non-US layouts as well), it is even difficult with a regular, full PC hardware keyboard, as explained in my earlier post.

I think that Brunoais was talking about the BBCode insert buttons (above the posting input window -- B, I and u, for example), not the keyboard "buttons" (AKA "keys").

I was going to ask that question myself. Why can't you press those buttons to insert the BBCode for you instead of typing it?

Steve

that ^.
Sorry I was not clear.
Anyway... I think I can work with SCE's owner and I think we can work on creating a triple mode (HTML, BBCode, MD).

It's already part of the TODO to allow swapping SCE between RTE, WYSIWYG and source code. With some adjustments, we probably can make 2 source code modes where 1 is BBCode and the other is MD.
With that, the only issue that remains is how to work with things that have no MD correspondence... I'll think about that later. Anyway, making something that does BBCode <-> MD is possible and easy (after having something that parses MD) for all BBCode that has MD correspondence.

EXreaction wrote:But really, who uses their mobile devices for that much anyways? Does anyone expect to write well formatted documents on their phone? No, they don't--people use their phones for quick tasks and leave in depth work to devices with more usable input.

Well... sometimes, it's desirable write at least a minimum of formatting on phones and tablets, too. For example, if I want to include a list with a handful of items in a reply post, I would like to do that no matter if I'm at the desktop PC or with a mobile device at this time.

It would be far worse on a mobile device for the 95% of users who haven't memorized all of the formatting rules for whatever flavor of markdown is used on the site. Whenever I have to try and format something in markdown I always need a separate dedicated window open with the specific rules for the site I'm trying to use--try that on a phone.

Sorry, but this sounds like Markdown could only be used if the user memorized all of its syntax at once, and was unusable otherwise, but I think that this is wrong. Let me re-quote your statement, with "Markdown" replaced by "BBCode":

It would be far worse on a mobile device for the 95% of users who haven't memorized all of the formatting rules for whatever flavor of BBCode is used on the site. Whenever I have to try and format something in BBCode I always need a separate dedicated window open with the specific rules for the site I'm trying to use--try that on a phone.

Indeed, in this regard, the Markdown dialect that is eventually implemented should be clearly documented, so that users can look up the details in the dialect's documentation, no matter if this is eventually John Gruber's original, Pandoc's, or something else.

I don't know if it is possible or even reasonable, but it seems to me that it would be ideal that if Markdown was implemented and activated (individually by the user or globally by the admin), that BBCode could still be used, quasi as a fall-back in an otherwise Markdown-formatted post.

This would make it possible to implement only a minimal Markdown dialect without extensions (e.g. John Gruber's), remove any requirement to memorize all Markdown syntax, and allow everyone to pick the formatting syntax that s/he feels is best.

Best regards,
Carsten

Cafu - The Game and Graphics Engine for Multiplayer, Multiplatform, Realtime 3D Action
Learn more at www.cafu.de

Pony99CA wrote:Why can't you press those buttons to insert the BBCode for you instead of typing it?

Because the sequence

take your hand from the keyboard,

grab the mouse,

point,

click,

point back into the text and click to reposition the cursor,

continue typing

takes much more time than simply typing the formatting syntax.

(On a mobile device, it's even worse, e.g. due to leaving "text field input" mode (collapsing the virtual keyboard), it is easy to hit the button next to the one that you actually wanted, re-positioning the cursor, etc.)

Best regards,
Carsten

Cafu - The Game and Graphics Engine for Multiplayer, Multiplatform, Realtime 3D Action
Learn more at www.cafu.de

brunoais wrote:It's already part of the TODO to allow swapping SCE between RTE, WYSIWYG and source code. With some adjustments, we probably can make 2 source code modes where 1 is BBCode and the other is MD.
With that, the only issue that remains is how to work with things that have no MD correspondence... I'll think about that later. Anyway, making something that does BBCode <-> MD is possible and easy (after having something that parses MD) for all BBCode that has MD correspondence.

This sounds very very exiting!

Just a question, what is about MD that has no correspondence in BBCode, such as headings or (much less important) tables?

Best regards,
Carsten

Cafu - The Game and Graphics Engine for Multiplayer, Multiplatform, Realtime 3D Action
Learn more at www.cafu.de

EXreaction wrote:But really, who uses their mobile devices for that much anyways? Does anyone expect to write well formatted documents on their phone? No, they don't--people use their phones for quick tasks and leave in depth work to devices with more usable input.

It would be far worse on a mobile device for the 95% of users who haven't memorized all of the formatting rules for whatever flavor of markdown is used on the site. Whenever I have to try and format something in markdown I always need a separate dedicated window open with the specific rules for the site I'm trying to use--try that on a phone.

brunoais wrote:It's already part of the TODO to allow swapping SCE between RTE, WYSIWYG and source code. With some adjustments, we probably can make 2 source code modes where 1 is BBCode and the other is MD.
With that, the only issue that remains is how to work with things that have no MD correspondence... I'll think about that later. Anyway, making something that does BBCode <-> MD is possible and easy (after having something that parses MD) for all BBCode that has MD correspondence.

This sounds very very exiting!

Just a question, what is about MD that has no correspondence in BBCode, such as headings or (much less important) tables?

If there's no installed BBCode correspondence, then it is ignored and it is not parsed (just stored as-is).
Makes sense, right?

Sorry, I'm not sure if I actually understand this:
If I wanted to define such a BBCode, how would it look like?

Btw., another very important advantage of Markdown, compared to BBCode, is that you're defining logical structure such as heading, sub-heading, etc., rather than formatting, such as font-size, font-weight, etc.

Personally, I am disappointed by this so-called "standard" Markdown. It's been several years in the making behind closed doors and now they're going public without a formal grammar. Instead, we have a set of 441 "examples".

As far as forum software is concerned, it's impossible to use the reference implementation or follow the specs because they explicitly allow any HTML elements to be used, even those that are not currently defined. Obviously, users shouldn't be allowed to include arbitrary HTML in their posts.

I like Markdown in general and I like John MacFarlane's work in this space, but stmd is not the improvement I was hoping for.